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September Winner's Story: The Seen Collection: Reflecting on Lost Love: 1148 words
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unico_love.Being a Watcher meant August had a lot of time to think about the past. He had regrets. Not many, but some days it felt like too many. The one he felt like a weight on his shoulders when he was at his most lonely was walking away from the only woman he had ever loved. On the day he choose to fulfil his destiny and become a Watcher was the same day he left everything behind. If a Seer hadn't been at his college career fair, the same way there hadn't been a Seer at his school career fair, he would never have known that he was meant to be a Watcher, so he would have had a chance to live a life of happiness with her.
Sighing, he looked down at the only picture of her he still had. It was one of the three things he had picked up when he was given a chance to tell his parents what had happened. The other two had disappeared after several moves and he was grateful he still had the picture. Gently he stroked a finger down her photographic hair, trying not to think about what might have been. There was no guarantee that she was the woman he would marry had he lived his life normally even though that was what he'd wanted up until the moment he was told that he was a Watcher.
There were days when he couldn't stop himself from daydreaming about what their life together would have been like. It had been his choice to grab his destiny with both hands rather than staying with her, so he felt like he had no right to think about what might have been. He hadn't even asked her how she felt about it because he'd been young and as far as he was concerned his life belonged to him. Their last conversation had not been a good one.
“You what?” she'd asked, her voice raised and it had been possible even for him to hear the pain in it. He'd never been very good at empathy, which was probably why he made a good Watcher. “Being a Watcher isn't easy, August, even though it may sound easy.”
“They've Seen me.” He remembered shaking his head in disbelief then, unable to believe that he had been Seen. “I can't just walk away from it.”
“Please don't do this.” Tears had welled up in her eyes but they hadn't trickled down her cheeks. “Take some time to think about this.”
“Why? This is real. It's something that I will be good at.” He'd never been very good at the school thing or at working out what it was he actually wanted to do with his life. “They need me.”
“Have you ever met a Watcher?”
“No.”
She'd sighed then. “I have. It's probably not something I should be talking about but I want you to understand. Watching over the Seen is a very lonely job. After you have gone through the training, after you've made new friends, you'll be torn away from them and sent to a house somewhere in the country where you'll be utterly alone. Maybe someone in the house will talk to you if you're lucky but you'll still be their enemy. You will be a part of a system that tears families apart.”
He stared into her photographic eyes and wished he'd listened to her. Instead he'd just ignored her. It was callous considering how much pain she was in but at that time he felt as though she was trying to talk him out of it for her. The idea that she was really trying to help him make the right decision for him had never crossed his mind.
“I'm sorry,” he whispered, trying to tell his past self that he should listen to her and think.
Unsurprisingly his past self didn't listen and continued with the exact words that he'd said to her forty six years years before. “I want this. It's my destiny.”
“Seers don't see definites, August. They see possibilities.” She'd got angry then, knowing that he was listening but he wasn't understanding anything she said. “You may be the greatest Watcher they've ever had and that may have been what they've Seen, but on the other hand you may not because their vision has been connected to a situation that never happened.”
He wished he could go back to her and say, 'I will take everything you say into consideration when I make my decision'. Unfortunately by the time he spoke to her about it he'd already made up his mind that he was going to become a Watcher and nothing anyone said was going to change his mind. It didn't help that being a Watcher ran in his family. There was a photo album of all the relations who had become Watchers which made him want to follow in their footsteps. It had never bothered him that he'd never met any of them because you didn't quit being a Watcher.
“Are you jealous?” he'd asked, sounding smug.
“No, I'm not. I wouldn't wish being a Watcher on my worst enemy but if you've made up your mind that this is really what you want to do then I wish you well, August.” He'd watched as she forced herself to stay calm and not start crying. “I'm happy that you've found something that you want to do with your life even though it means that I will never see you again.”
August swallowed past the lump in his throat, feeling emotions that he'd never felt at the time. Maybe if he'd known then what he knew after a long career as a Watcher he might have made a different decisions, but he doubted it. The time it took between the moment he was told by the Seer that he'd been Seen as a Watcher to when he'd made a decision was less than twenty minutes. The Seer had told him to think about it for at least a couple of days and he hadn't listened. Back then he hadn't listened to anyone. A tear dripped onto the photo.
“Sometimes I think I made the wrong decision,” he said to it, imagining that it was her. “This is a lonely job and I want you to know that I am sorry for not listening to you when you told me that. I still love you.”
Breathing deeply he wiped the tear off her and then put her back into his desk where she would be safe. He picked up his pen because he knew that writing another report on Equinox and Grey was the best thing he could do to stop himself from thinking about her. By the time he had a piece of paper in front of him he was back to his normal Watcher self.
©K A Jones 2011
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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This should say either:
"On the day he choose to fulfil his destiny and become a Watcher, he left everything behind."
OR
"The day he choose to fulfil his destiny and become a Watcher was the same day he left everything behind."
>>She'd got angry then,<<
That should probably say "She'd gotten" instead.
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